Blackboard Inc. Announces Charter Release Of Blackboard Learning System ML(TM)

Blackboard Inc. announced the immediate availability of the Charter Release of Blackboard Learning System ML - the multi-language edition of the company's market-leading course management system. With this release, Blackboard sets a new industry standard for excellence in multilingual enterprise learning software. The Blackboard Learning System ML is dedicated to enhancing the daily education experience. The system offers course and content authoring tools, a robust assessment engine, as well as synchronous and asynchronous collaboration tools - all with convenient and easy-to-use enterprise functions and capabilities. The system, developed on fifth-generation Blackboard technology now deployed at more than 2,400 institutions worldwide, allows academic staff and students around the world to fully experience all aspects of the course and system user interface in their language or languages of choice, and to switch among languages - all within a single implementation. "We are very pleased to have launched the industry's first multi-language enterprise-class learning system," said Andrew Rosen, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Blackboard International. "The feedback from our Beta clients has been tremendous and we are certain that the Blackboard Learning System ML will meet the growing needs and demands of the global education marketplace." Meeting Clients Needs Around the World Currently, the system enables a variety of languages to be displayed in the user interface, currently including Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Spanish and English. Others, including, Dutch, Italian, Korean, and Portuguese are currently under development. The new Blackboard Learning System ML runs on both Windows and Solaris platforms. "The Blackboard Learning System has been widely adopted on our campus and the number of users and courses increases tremendously every semester. With the German version of Blackboard Learning System ML, we expect Blackboard will surely be further integrated into our own academic environment as well as throughout the German market," stated Georg J. Anker, Abteilung fur Neue Medien, Universitat Innsbruck. Blackboard Learning System ML permits a culturally tailored online environment for all users. The platform is fully Unicode-architected, enabling the system to interact in virtually any language as determined by the end user, instructor or system administrator. This architecture also enables Blackboard to expand the number of languages offered with relative ease and fast time to market. Interoperability and Blackboard Building Blocks Blackboard Learning System ML is designed to interoperate with an institution's administrative systems, including SCT, SITS, Capita, Datatel, HIS, and PeopleSoft, as well as authentication systems such as LDAP and Kerberos. This integration lets an institution enrich the student experience by providing personalised access to campus services and a tighter connection between academic and student life. In addition, training and support costs are reduced through centralised administration and management. Blackboard Learning System ML also underscores the Blackboard Building Blocks(SM) Programme which provides an open architecture to enable internally developed or other third-party learning applications, interfaces, and system services to interact seamlessly with Blackboard. More than 25 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), dozens of academic institutions and leading publishers are developing add-ons to Blackboard to expand and add value to the educational experience. Charter Release Available Now After more than a year of development and testing, as well as a dedicated Beta period, Blackboard is proud to offer Blackboard Learning System ML in Charter Release. During this limited-time period, clients will receive a full license to value-added functionality as well as both the English language and core language packs at no additional charge. Please visit our Web site at global.blackboard.com to find an international Blackboard representative nearest to you. About Blackboard Inc. Blackboard Inc. was founded to transform the Internet into a powerful environment for the education experience. The company offers a complete suite of enterprise software products and services that power a total "e-Education Infrastructure" for schools, colleges, universities and other education providers. Blackboard solutions deliver the promise of the Internet for online teaching and learning, campus communities, auxiliary services and integration of Web-enabled student services and back office systems. Blackboard's Learning, Community Portal and Transaction Systems are consistently ranked by industry analysts as the market share and customer satisfaction leaders for thousands of academic institutions and a leading number of the Internet's most popular consumer education sites. The company is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices and staff across North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia. Please visit www.blackboard.com for more information. ots Originaltext: Blackboard Inc. Im Internet recherchierbar: http://www.presseportal.de Pressekontakt: Contact: Michael J. Stanton Company: Blackboard Inc. Phone: 202-463-4860 ext.305 Email: mstanton@blackboard.com Contact: Dan Baum Company: Periscope Communications Phone: 703-548-5553 ext.205 Email: dan@periscopecommunications.com